Katie Knorovsky

As Katie Knorovsky pointed out in a feature she wrote for Traveler magazine, the citizens of Greenville, in the northwest corner of South Carolina, are working hard to make Greenville “the most beautiful and livable city in America.” Here are ten ways to do like the locals do in this Southern belle.

A colleague described the sunny hills of the surrounding countryside as the Tuscany of the South. A news article heralded a plan for an elevated public transportation system made up of Jetsons-esque pods. Fast Company magazine dubbed Greenville “the knowledge economy’s next big thing.” I needed to see for myself what was happening.

Take a page out of Henry David Thoreau’s book, and paddle on northern Maine’s remote Allagash River. “Here was traveling of the old heroic kind over the unaltered face of nature,” he wrote in “The Maine Woods,” his account of a series of mid-19th-century canoeing and hiking trips he took through the New England state’s largely uncharted woods.

National Geographic explorers-in-residence Dereck and Beverly Joubert have spent the past three decades captivating audiences with their rare footage and photographs of Africa’s big cats. Now, they’re taking aim at a different kind of challenge: conservation tourism.

When spring fever strikes in the United States, only two things dominate: basketball brackets and easy getaways. Stoke your school spirit—and youthful energy—on a NCAA college visit. Because no matter what happens during March Madness, these towns always fire us up.

In the “bean belt” looping Africa, Asia, and the Americas, coffee provides more than a jolt—it’s an economic lifeline and a cultural bedrock. Coffee buyer Kim Elena Ionescu’s hunt for the planet’s best beans has taken her from Bolivia to Ethiopia. Steeped in ritual, her adventures are anything but stale. Here are some of the highlights.

Rising star Danai Gurira believes in the power of hybrids—her term for people who thrive at a confluence of cultures. Born in Iowa, raised in her parents’ native Zimbabwe, trained in New York City, and now based in Los Angeles, “The Walking Dead” actress brings a layered perspective—and a rare spark—to her work.

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National Geographic believes that to know the world is to change it. We're on the front lines of travel that illuminates, celebrates, and preserves irreplaceable places—and we're taking you along for the ride.